The Hot Outdoors

Tom Gralish, Inquirer Staff Photographer

Posted:
Sunday, June 27, 2010, 11:04 AM

I was on two "farms" in the past week, and both on really hot and humid days. People who work indoors gripe, and televison and radio weather personalites hype both high and low "real feel" temperatures, but outside, the people I've encountered over the years who work or play outdoors almost never complain about the weather.

That was definitely the case with the the community gardeners at Haverford College which dates back over five decades. These gardeners weren't even angry about being booted out of their peaceful oasis for high-paying customers. As Inquirer writer Kathy Boccella explains in the newspaper today, the garden in getting ready for its final harvest. In 2012 they'll have to pull up stakes so Haverford can rent out the grounds for hospitality tents for the 2013 U.S. Open at nearby Merion Golf Club.

I also spent another one of the hot mornings this week on my knees in a field - but I felt like I was in Provence, in France. I was photographing bees pollinating blooming rows of purple lavender, for a story by Inquirer garden writer Virginia A. Smith. For more photos click here.

Tom Gralish is a general assignment photographer at The Inquirer, concentrating on local news and self-generated feature photos.

He has been at the paper since 1983, photographing everything from revolution in the Philippines to George W. Bush’s road to the White House to homeless people living on the street right outside his newspaper's front door. For his photo essay on Philadelphia’s homeless, he was awarded both the Pulitzer Prize and the Robert F. Kennedy Award.

His weekly newspaper column, "Scene Through the Lens," takes a look at Philadelphia's urban landscape.

Gralish, along with Inquirer colleague and Pulitzer Prize-winning writer Michael Vitez, spent a year visiting the Philadelphia Museum of Art to capture the stories and photos of "Rocky runners" who come from all over the world to climb the steps - just as Sylvester Stallone did in the Academy Award winning film, Rocky. Their book, Rocky Stories: Tales of Love, Hope and Happiness at America’s Most Famous Steps, was published in November 2006.